“It is observed at sea that men are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do, would issue the order to “scour the anchor.”

Hope… is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.

Character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse–either being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.

Those who aren’t making mistakes probably aren’t making anything.

Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.

Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.

The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.

Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.

For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.

Work is one of the best educators of practical character.

The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.

Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.

Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.

Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.

Enthusiasm, the sustaining power of all great action.

Make good thy standing place, and move the world.

Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.

This idea that the employment of women, the movement of women outside the home into the work world, and their demand for equality is somehow responsible for increasing juvenile delinquency or the increase in divorce rate, is just so much bullshit.

If God himself was not willing to use coercion to force man to accept certain religious views, man, uninspired and liable to error, ought not to use the means that Jehovah would not employ.

Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families.

No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.

See yourself as self employed.

If we want to invest in the prosperity of our nation, we must invest in the education of our children so that their talents may be fully employed.

It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.